{392}

* * * * *

CONCLUSION.

We have now, my fellow Christians, arrived at the conclusion of the task
which I proposed to undertake. I have laid before you, to the utmost of
my abilities and means, the result of my inquiry into the evidence of
holy Scripture and primitive antiquity, on the invocation of saints and
angels, and the blessed Virgin Mary. In this inquiry, excepting so far
as was necessary to elucidate the origin and history of the Roman
Catholic tenet of the Assumption of the Virgin, we have limited our
researches to the writers who lived before the Nicene Council. That
Council has always been considered a cardinal point,--a sort of
climacteric in the history of the early Church. It was the first Council
to which all the bishops of Christendom were summoned; and the influence
of its decrees is felt beneficially in the Catholic Church to this very
day. In fixing upon this Council as our present boundary line, I was
influenced by a conviction, that the large body of Christians, whether
of the Roman, the Anglican, or any other branch of the Church Catholic,
would consent to this as an indisputable axiom,--that what the Church
Catholic did not believe or practise up to {393} that date of her
existence upon earth, cannot be regarded as either Catholic or
primitive, or apostolical. Ending with St. Athanasius, (who, though he
was present at that Council, yet brings his testimony down through
almost another half century, his death not having taken place till A.D.
873, on the verge of his eightieth year,) we have examined the remains
of Christian antiquity, reckoning forward to that Council from the times
of the Apostles. We have searched diligently into the writings, the
sentiments, and the conduct of those first disciples of our Lord. We
have contemplated the words of our blessed Saviour himself, and the
inspired narrative of his life and teaching. With the same object in
view we have studied the prophets of the Old Testament, and the works of
Moses; and we have endeavoured, at the fountainhead, to ascertain what
is the mind and will of God, as revealed to the world from the day when
He made man, on the question of our invoking the angels and saints to
intercede with Him in our behalf, or to assist and succour us on the
earth. And the result is this:--From first to last, the voice of God
Himself, and the voices of the inspired messengers of heaven, whether
under the patri